Faculty Profile: Omar Galárraga

In addition to his project in South Africa, Galárraga has also accomplished notable work in Mexico City. Working through the city’s largest HIV clinic, Galárraga managed  to interview over 18,000 men who have sex with men – including sex workers – on their willingness to receive regular check-ups and avoid new STIs for varying financial incentives. These findings have since been published and used as the basis for an incentive-providing pilot program. Galárraga and colleagues are very proud of this work because through it they were able to work in close collaboration with the city’s HIV Treatment and Prevention Program and ultimately influence policy development. The legislature in Mexico has recently passed a law to support HIV-positive patients of low socioeconomic status by providing a metro pass as transportation compensation for their clinic visit, thus incentivizing future check-ups. Galárraga and colleagues have since been asked to evaluate the impact of this new program.

Beyond his work in Mexico and South Africa, Galárraga also works closely with Lawrence Were, a Ph.D. candidate in Brown’s department of Health Services, Policy and Practice focusing on health economics. With Lawrence, Galárraga  is evaluating the impact of Kenya’s National Hospital Insurance Fund on prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV outcomes. Also in Kenya, Galárraga is working with AMPATH – a large consortium that currently provides treatment to over 150,000 people in western Kenya. In the past, AMPATH has been funded by PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). Galárraga and colleagues are looking to evaluate the feasibility of alternative funding mechanisms, particularly the use of a community-based health insurance pilot through Zurich Health.